Hitoshi Imamura

Hitoshi Imamura (28 June 1886-4 October 1968) was a General of the Imperial Japanese Army who commanded the Japanese 16th and 18th Armies during World War II.

Biography
Hitoshi Imamura was born on 28 June 1886 in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. He joined the Imperial Japanese Army in 1907, and in 1918 he was sent as a military attache to the United Kingdom and to British India in 1927. In March 1936 he became Deputy Chief-of-Staff to the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo, and in March 1938 he took over the Japanese 5th Infantry Division in China. Imamura was given command of the Japanese 16th Army in November 1941 a month before World War II, and he led it during the capture of the Dutch East Indies in 1942, taking Java. From 1943, he was stationed on Rabaul and hampered the movement of supplies to the United States on Guadalcanal. In September 1945, Imamura and Jinichi Kusaka surrendered to the Allied Powers, and Imamura was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for war crimes and released in 1954. He died in 1968 at the age of 82.